Society places a premium on efficient vision. Academic and occupational environments require increasing amounts of printed and/or visual information to be processed accurately and quickly. The efficiency of a person""s visual system influences how the person collects and processes information. Repetitive demands on the visual system tend to create problems in susceptible individuals. Inefficient vision may cause an individual to slow down, be less accurate, experience excessive fatigue, or make errors. When these types of signs and symptoms appear, the individual""s conscious attention to the visual process is required. This, in turn, may interfere with the speed, accuracy and comprehension of visual tasks.
Vision is the dominant sense, and is a product of a person""s inherited potential, past experiences, and current information. Vision is comprised of three areas of function: visual pathway integrity including eye health, vision acuity, and refracted status; visual skills including accommodation (eye focusing), binocular vision (eye teaming), and eye movements (eye tracking); and visual information processing including identification, discrimination, spatial awareness, and integration with other senses.
Learning to read, and reading for information require efficient visual abilities. The eyes must team precisely, focus clearly and track quickly and accurately across the page. These processes must be coordinated with the perceptual and memory aspects of vision which, in turn, must combine with linguistic processing for comprehension. To provide reliable information, this must occur with precise timing. Inefficient or poorly developed vision requires individuals to divide their attention between the task and the involved visual abilities. Some individuals experience symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, eye strain, errors, loss of place and difficulties sustaining attention. Others may have an absence of symptoms due to the avoidance of visual demanding tasks.
Recent studies have described what happens in the genetic neural structures in the pre-synaptic membrane synaptic vesicles, i.e., the synaptic gap, and the post synaptic membrane chemical structures that cause a blockage of impulses which result in various paroxysmal memory and learning or other behavioral disorders. In the optometry field, at least three behavioral visual blockage patterns have been identified. These cases are typed as B-1 (exophorial), B-2 (esophorial), and C (exophorial constricted). Presently, no mechanisms have been found to open the neuron transmission pathways related to these behavioral blockage patterns.
Thus, there exists a need for a visual therapy system and method to improve the neuron transmission of impulses related to visual processing.
Accordingly, it is the object of the present invention to provide a visual therapy system and method for improving the neuron transmission of impulses relating to visual processing.
According to the present invention, the foregoing and other objects are obtained by the Autogenous Visual Inhibition Cycle described herein which represents a method for improving the visual efficiency in the versional and vergence ocular motor (eye movement) patterns in order to locate, center, and identify an object in the panoramic views of a patient. The system and method described herein aids to reflect the object data to the information processing systems of explicit (declarative or fact) memory, and also includes implicative (non-declarative or skill) memory patterns as an aid to the psychological process of learning.
The Autogenous Visual Inhibition Cycle described herein includes various regimens of orthoptic binocular vision therapy using various sets of yoked prismatic glasses. The regimen of orthoptic binocular vision therapy corresponds to the various paroxysmal behavioral visual patterns of concern. The visual therapy method includes use of different sets of yoked prismatic glasses in a prescribed sequence wherein each set of yoked prismatic glasses is used to perform various visual therapy exercises.
A visual therapy method is disclosed comprising wearing a series of pairs of yoked prismatic glasses wherein each yoked prism comprises a base and apex opposite the base. The series of pairs comprises:
lateral base 0xc2x0 yoked prisms, lateral base 180xc2x0 yoked prisms, vertical base 90xc2x0 yoked prisms, and vertical base 270xc2x0 yoked prisms. The method includes performing a regimen of ocular exercises while wearing each pair of yoked prismatic glasses. The exercises include versional and vergence exercises. The yoked prismatic glasses are adapted to stimulate inhibitory and initiatory areas, respectively, of the wearer""s visual cortex and, thereby improve visual disorders relating to behavioral visual blockage patterns.